How do you think?

[Skeptisk]

A while back I was talking with my daughter and the topic of thinking came up. Personally I have a constant internal dialogue in my head ie I hear myself speaking to myself. If I am watching TV or speaking with someone it can go into the background. My daughter was very surprised as she thinks in pictures and not in words.

I was surprised because I had assumed (wrongly) that other people are similar. It seems that there are various ways of thinking.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised at I had also found out that I had aphantasia, meaning I can’t really picture things in my mind like most other people.

So how do you think?

[Wacky Racer]

In my mind.

For example, I fancy a bowl of corn flakes.

(Gets up to get some)

[SAS Tom]

Yes I also have aphantasia. Not something I thought about until recently but had a long discussion with my wife and other family members finding that I was the odd one out.

I’ve never been one for reading fiction and it seems like this is a big part of the reason. From the people I spoke to they almost have a film going on in their head. I don’t see anything. Same with relaxation stuff when they tell you to close your eyes and imagine something, I just see darkness.

I remember things/people/places but can’t see anything in my “minds eye”.

Music is another thing, it either sounds good or bad to me whereas my wife gets hung up on the words/story. I couldn’t care less as long as I like listening to it.

[thepritch]

I’m a very visual person. So it’s no surprise my mind works completely in pictures and patterns. My mind is one big film set. I didn’t even know others would see ‘nothing’. Really interesting, and am going to go and read more about this as it really interests me.

[Skyedriver]

What an intriguing post OP
Sat here for the last 5 minutes trying to work out my answer.
Retired Civil Engineer I often had to come up with a design/arrangement and while I could probably think it out in pictures in my head I would end up sketching it out various ways to see if there were somethings I'd forgotten or it wouldn't work because of.
But a Maths question can't be thought in pictures only words/numbers.
Writing has to be words in thought.

Well that's Saturdays task sorted, I'm going to be wandering around trying to understand how I am thinking.

[Skeptisk]

SAS Tom said:

Yes I also have aphantasia. Not something I thought about until recently but had a long discussion with my wife and other family members finding that I was the odd one out.

I’ve never been one for reading fiction and it seems like this is a big part of the reason. From the people I spoke to they almost have a film going on in their head. I don’t see anything. Same with relaxation stuff when they tell you to close your eyes and imagine something, I just see darkness.

I remember things/people/places but can’t see anything in my “minds eye”.

Music is another thing, it either sounds good or bad to me whereas my wife gets hung up on the words/story. I couldn’t care less as long as I like listening to it.

I’ve always enjoyed reading, even thought I don’t see pictures in my head. However I do tend to prefer books that are about ideas (eg 1984) or those where there is beauty in the language itself.

It’s odd because I seem able to do maths problems that should involve rotating things in your head and “seeing” the answer, even though I don’t see anything. Maybe what I lack is the conscious experience of the visualisation.

[AC43]

SAS Tom said:

Yes I also have aphantasia. Not something I thought about until recently but had a long discussion with my wife and other family members finding that I was the odd one out.

I’ve never been one for reading fiction and it seems like this is a big part of the reason. From the people I spoke to they almost have a film going on in their head. I don’t see anything. Same with relaxation stuff when they tell you to close your eyes and imagine something, I just see darkness.

I remember things/people/places but can’t see anything in my “minds eye”.

Music is another thing, it either sounds good or bad to me whereas my wife gets hung up on the words/story. I couldn’t care less as long as I like listening to it.

As I understand it, language is a last step in thinking; it's the part where we translate the patterns of thoughts that out synapses have come up with into something that can be used to communicate with another human being. So "real" thinking is sub-lingual.

I'm a massive music fan but music mainly communicates to me in a sub-lingual way. I've always been astonished when people go to gigs and are able to sing every single lyric. Even for the bands I know the very best I can usually just manage a few lines of the chorus at the most. The words don't matter much to me; it's all about the mood and style of the music and how it makes me feel. At that level I find music all-consuming.

Babies don't have language but they do respond to vocal tones. I've always assumed it's something like that.

Going back to the original question, when I'm in really deep thought trying to work through something really complex I don't think I'm thinking in words or pictures; my brain is trying to work things out in terms of themes and patterns long before serving me up with some form of answer. Sometimes I "know" I have an answer before I have the actual words to explain that answer to another human being or the ability to write it down cohesively. That part can take a few goes. And sometimes I need to express what I'm thinking in a diagram; but again I'm not "thinking in diagrams" - my brain has figured something out and the way to communicate that particular set of concepts happens to be via a diagram.

Anyway here's a podcast on the brain where Jordan Harbinger interviews an amazing neuroscientist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-RUqoaPqQQ

[Pitre]

Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes, I just sits...

[dundarach]

Wacky Racer said:

In my mind.

For example, I fancy a bowl of corn flakes.

(Gets up to get some)

I see the bowl and on the way, I'd visualise opening the fridge pouring milk, eating them, sitting down next to Kylie Minogue wearing combat pants and a white t-shirt and so on.

Then she'd be shouting about stuff and I'd hear that.

Then I'd be sulking and feel that

etc.

[SpudLink]

I would say words, not pictures. The ideas themselves are formed at a lower level, then the brain puts them into words.
When I’m working (computer code) i think my thoughts are probably structural diagrams.

I only ‘see’ things in my mind (people, cars, etc) when I make the effort.

I think language helps provide structure to our ideas, but it is not how they are formed.

[QuickQuack]

Wacky Racer said:

In my mind.

For example, I fancy a bowl of corn flakes.

(Gets up to get some)

Damn it. Now I want some. You're gonna make me fat!

[AC43]

SpudLink said:

I would say words, not pictures. The ideas themselves are formed at a lower level, then the brain puts them into words.
When I’m working (computer code) i think my thoughts are probably structural diagrams.

I only ‘see’ things in my mind (people, cars, etc) when I make the effort.

I think language helps provide structure to our ideas, but it is not how they are formed.

Neatly put, agree with all that.

It's interesting to say that you only "see" something when you make the effort; the brain uses a huge amount of processing power when conjuring up images that correlate with memories. There's an interesting interviewing technique where you ask people things like "where were you when you started writing this CV?". Their brain goes into memory & image retrieval mode which crows out their ability to consciously manage what they're saying.

I went on a training course and had it done to me. It's quite unnerving because afterwards I could barely remember a word I'd said.

[thepritch]

AC43 said:

Their brain goes into memory & image retrieval mode which crows out their ability to consciously manage what they're saying.
.

For me that’s quite a revelation. I guess this could affect my ability to speak ‘naturally’ at times. My mind is so busy thinking in pictures and retrieving memories (?) that I will quite regularly lose my train of thought. How would you develop this so you can think more in words? Or is it how we were ‘built’ ?

[OldSkoolRS]

thepritch said:

For me that’s quite a revelation. I guess this could affect my ability to speak ‘naturally’ at times. My mind is so busy thinking in pictures and retrieving memories (?) that I will quite regularly lose my train of thought. How would you develop this so you can think more in words? Or is it how we were ‘built’ ?

I seem to think in pictures too and wonder if I have a similar problem to you: When I was working we did a typical corporate course called 'Insights' where they test you to see where you fit on a spectrum of four 'colours' for your conscious and unconscious thinking process.

Most of the engineers came out as 'green' (people centric) and 'blue' (detail orientated). I was mostly on the blue spectrum which fitted my job as it involved being very methodical, detailed and accurate. However, one of the characteristics of 'blue' person is that they tend to need to be given time to think something through, so not to expect an instant answer when questioning them, which does also seem to fit with me...I like to think it through, probably overthink if I'm honest, then respond.

This is a picture I found on line about Insights:




I found it quite interesting and that when were asked to guess what the main colour of each person was, my colleagues picked me as 'blue' though I felt that when I'm playing music in a band I tend to exhibit more of the yellow characteristics. Apparently playing music uses both sides of the brain, so maybe one half of me is yellow.

[Roofless Toothless]

I think in thoughts. If you think in pictures or words, something must be going wrong, at least in my book. Thoughts are like intuition, rapid and non verbalised.

[Pitre]

Roofless Toothless said:

I think in thoughts. If you think in pictures or words, something must be going wrong, at least in my book. Thoughts are like intuition, rapid and non verbalised.

Me too. Definitely not in words or pictures.

[cheesejunkie]

I daydream. Always and anywhere.

But I also have an internal monologue that runs in words only.

I find myself rehearsing internally frequently. Part of my job is presentations and standing in front of groups of people with similar interests or sales presentations, taking questions etc. The taking questions part is something I daydream about frequently. I consider it preparation .

FWIW, on personality type (I don't always agree with these classifications). Engineer/programming/maths/physics nerd. My job entails R&D and coming up with new ideas, but I also have to manage people and based on some of them following me through company moves I think I'm ok at it.

Even though I'm mostly managerial these days I still work on programming problems and when thinking about them I can picture things like concurrent threads, multi-node systems etc in my head quite easily in a way that words wouldn't encapsulate. It's job specific but I find it easy to create a mental image of a problem, I'm not reading/writing code in my head.

So answer is both really.

[HRL]

Well every day is a school day.

47 years old and I’ve discovered that I have aphantasia today. I’d never even heard of it prior to reading this thread.

I’ve always had to explain to my wife how I can’t simply visualise things that she’s described to me. Didn’t realise that it was a condition affecting 1-3% of the population.

Had awful long term memory my entire life, don’t ever remember dreams, total lack of an imagination, and can’t visualise anything until I see it with my own eyes or in a picture/photo.

Internal dialogue only when thinking.

Who knew!

Edited by HRL on Saturday 20th April 19:58

[M4cruiser]

Skeptisk said:

A while back I was talking with my daughter and the topic of thinking came up. Personally I have a constant internal dialogue in my head ie I hear myself speaking to myself. If I am watching TV or speaking with someone it can go into the background. My daughter was very surprised as she thinks in pictures and not in words.

I was surprised because I had assumed (wrongly) that other people are similar. It seems that there are various ways of thinking.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised at I had also found out that I had aphantasia, meaning I can’t really picture things in my mind like most other people.

So how do you think?

Interesting post OP. It's only in recent years that I've realised that I "think" far too much, and a lot more than other people.

(One example of an effect is that I never need the car radio on. I can drive hundreds of miles with no background noise. I sometimes have the news headlines, but can't stand constant music.)

The result is that I'm never lonely when I'm alone, yet I'm very lonely when I'm with other people.
I'm disappointed that my parents didn't help with this when I was younger.
The link between all of this and autism is quite strong.

[Mr Magooagain]

[quote=AC43]


I'm a massive music fan but music mainly communicates to me in a sub-lingual way. I've always been astonished when people go to gigs and are able to sing every single lyric. Even for the bands I know the very best I can usually just manage a few lines of the chorus at the most. The words don't matter much to me; it's all about the mood and style of the music and how it makes me feel. At that level I find music all-consuming.





I’m similar to this, I know the tunes extremely well but not the words, I whistle tunes pitch perfect so I’m told and I have a natural rhythm. Music for me is extremely emotional and due to a few unpleasant memories I now can’t listen to music.
On the very rare occasion in past that I’ve been out and music is playing along with dancing, I go trance like and like you say it’s all consuming.

I live in another country with another language so I find myself having constant conversations in my mind as training. But I mainly think in pictures, I’m an artisan so I’m constantly visualising projects and physically doing it in my mind.